Mirror Images: Is it really worth it?

Fireball, Fire's weakest spell (relative), w/o any proccs will deal ~100k for me on crits (which when you add in Ignite, is ~120k), and also proccs a Heating Up, or a Hot Streak if I already had a HU.

Images, without any proccs deal 150~175k on whatever target they feel is necessary to be attacked, and do not procc anything which will eventually lead to a single spell dealing about 2x what this entire (and what I feel to be, worthless) cooldown will do.

I'm just curious if it's actually worth it for me to use MI offensively rather than defensively as I have been. I mean, on a pre-pull, I'll always potion+MI, but during a fight, should I really waste a global for it?

(If you go by SimC, I will hit you. For whatever reason, it chooses to over-triple its DPET. Even in raids, my MI's DPET will never reach those levels)

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My images (frost) does somewhere around 3-400k dmg on avarage in those 30secs they are up. so that dmg for a gcd is worth it I guess, specially if u can time socond and third time time images with movement or so, making it worth more than a scorc/nt refresh/filler.

But yer, sometimes they are really pro to save, like if your raid almost wipes (or tanks dies) on 25mill on Horridon or some other boss - Biss goes for ya, images gives some ekstra secs to finish it off

I've tolerated some wild theories from you in the past, but I mean, come on...really?

Mirror Images are 1 GCD. Considering that they will likely do ~300K, if not more, damage in that 1 GCD, yes.
Fireball, Fire's "weakest" spell (seem to have forgotten Scorch) is, at least at my level of haste, 1.86s cast, and CRITS for 206K, upwards of that with Skull Banners as so forth.

It's 1 GCD. Sure the damage of it doesn't come immediately but in PvE it's not about the damage done in 1 second, it's about the damage done over the course of the fight. For the 1 GCD spend it's definitely f**king worth it.

I've tolerated some wild theories from you in the past, but I mean, come on...really?

Mirror Images are 1 GCD. Considering that they will likely do ~300K, if not more, damage in that 1 GCD, yes.
Fireball, Fire's "weakest" spell (seem to have forgotten Scorch) is, at least at my level of haste, 1.86s cast, and CRITS for 206K, upwards of that with Skull Banners as so forth.

It's 1 GCD. Sure the damage of it doesn't come immediately but in PvE it's not about the damage done in 1 second, it's about the damage done over the course of the fight. For the 1 GCD spend it's definitely f**king worth it.

300 if I have proccs up, in which case a crit Pyroblast would be ~400+Ignite; Fireball ~175+Ignite

Yes, I'm aware Scorch (and IB) are weaker, but I meant ones used in the "primary" rotation. Scorch isn't used unless you're moving, but if you want to talk semantics and feel elitist over me for such things, go ahead. If I'm moving, then yeah, MI would be a better choice over Scorch.

"DPS" also isn't the end-all goal in PvE. "EDPS" (Effective DPS) is more important. Sure, I could be multi-dotting on Megaera and Pyroblasting both the heads and my DPS could be quite a bit higher, or I could do my role and attack just the primary head as intended. My EDPS would be significantly higher that way. MI likes to dick around and cast at random things, even if they're about to die. On ST fights (Durumu, Ji-Kun if not flying) this isn't an issue. Other fights (the majority of them), it is.

Regardless of this, I still don't see why it's worth the global. Now if it procced a Hot Streak, I could obviously see the usefulness, but as Fire, compared to what I could do in that 1-1.5s, I just don't. Also keep in mind, you're talking about a very small DPS increase, so don't act like it's a huge difference. I ask a simple question and you act like I'm wondering if it's worth casting Arcane Explosion on Single Target.

Uses the same signature for over a year, just randomly gets infracted for it recently.
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Any time that it's used during a GCD you would not doing ~300k for AND it's a sure thing that the full duration will hit and none will go to waste, then yes, it is absolutely without question worth it.

IF:
The fight is going to last more than 30 seconds
The enemy will remain attackable for the next 30 seconds and not become invincible or untargetable in some fashion
There are no nearby targets upon which damage would be completely wasted (Mine seem to attack my primary target 100% of the time but you're reporting issues... ok. Only Maegara, Animus, Tortos and Twins have potential for completely wasted damage anyway)
You're not imminently going to get a massive damage buff that means waiting a few seconds would significantly increase their power
You don't feel like you're in danger of dying to aggro in the next three minutes

Cast Mirror Image

It'll never make or break your DPS but it's some nice passive damage and looks cool
Feel free to stop casting it if you want but you'll be performing a little under your maximum potential

Fireball, Fire's weakest spell (relative), w/o any proccs will deal ~100k for me on crits (which when you add in Ignite, is ~120k), and also proccs a Heating Up, or a Hot Streak if I already had a HU.

Images, without any proccs deal 150~175k

Half of the time you'll not have that crit, though. But let's say you do crit. 120k over 2.2s cast time before haste against 150k for 1.5s cast time before haste.

To compare, for the same 1.5s cast time, fireball crit does potentially ~82k. You're not comparing what potentially might happen later, because that's inconsequential for the time frame given. You should be comparing how much damage you have produced for any given amount of time; in this case, 1 global in place of casting fireball. Keep in mind as well, I've given you the benefit of the doubt and assumed a fireball crit, along with the low end of your quoted MI numbers. In reality, the DPCT of your fireball would be a fair bit lower, due to averages.

That said, I've only ever had issues with MI attacking the wrong target if I've started hitting a different one. Crystals on Tortos, for example. I've never had them swap heads on Megaera on me, nor Council.

Originally Posted by Dragon9870

I ask a simple question and you act like I'm wondering if it's worth casting Arcane Explosion on Single Target.

What you asked is about as nonsensical from even a cursory glance and a tiny understanding of the concept of DPCT, though. You even gave us numbers that favour casting MI from your own example. DPS is essentially throwing whatever is highest DPCT that's available to you at the moment, that won't be entirely wasted like combustion on a Megaera head that's about to die. You have, in essence, asked if it's worth casting AE on single target fights as fire.

I'll continue to use it on pre-pull and to drop aggro/to invis and mass

But again, you're only gimping yourself. It's one GCD and an instant cast at that, is it really worth questioning when it does more than enough damage to warrant using? Whatever, up to you I guess. Seems to be a trend of you over-analyzing things to ridiculous amounts lately.

But again, you're only gimping yourself. It's one GCD and an instant cast at that, is it really worth questioning when it does more than enough damage to warrant using? Whatever, up to you I guess. Seems to be a trend of you over-analyzing things to ridiculous amounts lately.

If a 100DPS increase isn't worth questioning to you over using it for utility/mechanics, then that's your thing.

Hell, I've actually turned a wipe into a kill with it before because it gave us 3 extra hits to absorb... >.>

Uses the same signature for over a year, just randomly gets infracted for it recently.
Placeholder signature is placeholder and will hopefully make me finish my shit.
Oh yeah, I'm a Druid and stuff.

To make it simple, his average fireball was around 137k dmg. I'm using numbers that I pull out completely out of my head, but I believe that you are losing 2 fireballs for every 3 mirrors used. This means that Vykina "lost" on average 274k dmg (+ ignite, which according to your numbers is around 20% extra) for using mirror images 3 times, which gave him 821k dmg. With these numbers the gain from using mirrors was a bit under 500k dmg, which translates to more than 1k dps during a match that lasted for 7:20.

All of this is based on a single log, it assumes certain haste levels, it assumes that no movement was needed during the encounter, it assumes ignite doing certain numbers and it removes heating up out of the equation, but I believe it still shows you that the difference is quite a bit more than 100 dps and it's well worth it to use mirror images in any encounter, increasingly so if you need to cast scorch at all.

Edit: Of course you can argue that 1k dps is neligible (and it actually is most of time), but with that logic you could also leave one slot of your gear ungemmed because it simply doesn't matter. The utility might actually make a wipe to a kill once in a blue moon, but same could be said about the small dps loss for not using them optimally.